NetLink
by EmberSynapse
Summary: Tori Vega lives her post-high school life in a high-tech version of LA. Advanced biologically-connected computers, AI-controlled homes and autonomous cars. She trades crypto to make money, but her real passion is figuring out how things work. Her biggest challenge is yet to come when she lands in the middle of a hack and theft, leading her to meet a woman she never saw coming.
1. WireWarden

Tuesday was usually the day that Tori spent reading in the café next to her house. This Tuesday, however, she decided instead to spend the evening soaking in the hot tub on her back deck. It was nearing Christmas and the temperatures were steadily dropping by the day, which caused neat swirls of steam from the water. Tori spread her arms on the rim of the tub, gripping the outside as she let her body float to the top. Two of the most cathartic things for her; hot water and weightlessness.

Soaking was the best way for her to sort out her personal issues. Between managing her portfolio, hanging out with friends (and their associated dramas), keeping up with family, and deciding whether or not to sign up for classes in the Spring, there was a lot to mull over. The sound of jets making bubbles created a white noise that allowed her to relax and think more freely. On her to-do list: Check the market, as usual, and get back to Cat about going to the movies over the weekend. She brought up the notepad in her vision and made notes of each, then slipped just below the water's surface, enough to cover her chin. The effect was mesmerizing and she closed her eyes, if only to keep the splashing water out of them.

As she started to fall asleep, Tori managed to get out of the water before she drowned and wrapped in a towel. The sting of the much colder air made her shiver, and she stood looking out into the valley while her lungs battled the temperature shock. With so much going on in the world it sure looked peaceful at night. The city lights shone bright, almost like a whole separate civilization in itself, which LA practically was. Digital billboards plagued the landscape and self-driven cars weaved in and out of traffic. Screens ruled the world, and light pollution had all but washed out the stars. Still, the moon was bright as ever.

With one last look at the stars she couldn't see without enhancing her vision, she went back inside, locking the deadbolt with the simple thought of it.

It was only nine o'clock, which meant she had to find something to do for a few more hours before she would be tired enough to go to sleep. A quick glance around the kitchen reminded her that she was running short on food, so a trip to the grocery store was a good plan. Something about living in California and getting fresh fruits and vegetables right off the vine always excited her about shopping. Her mom teased her about getting excited over something she considered so _ordinary_, but she didn't care. Homemade guacamole told her that she was right to be excited.

"Ember, sync my grocery list."

"Of course," said Ember, the computer built into Tori's house. It was a sophisticated AI-type of computing system that ran the house and helped Tori maintain her daily life. "Seven items have been added to your host list."

"Thank you."

Tori changed out of her bathing suit and into some leggings and an oversized shirt that hung off her left shoulder. Getting dressed after a long soak was a definite mood killer, but something stretchy and loose was a good alternative. She brushed her hair out in the mirror and let it splay over her shoulders, then slipped a zip-up hoodie on to complete the outfit. The leggings she wore always got her a lot of looks, but mainly from older guys that she wasn't interested in. She thought fleetingly about changing, but decided the comfort of the outfit was worth more than the discomfort of being stared at hungrily.

Once downstairs, Tori slipped her shoes on and pinged her keys. The HUD that overlaid her eyes suddenly showed a bright blue glow, indicating that her keys were on the counter next to the sink. She crossed over to the kitchen to grab them before heading out the front door, sending a digital signal to lock that deadbolt as well.

In the early 2030's a breakthrough digital technology was introduced that allowed any human being to get special contacts surgically fixed to their eyes. Tentacle-like 'feelers' and a circular nanochip lined the edge of each one and bore their way inside your cornea, eventually melding into your biological system and allowing the nanochip to interface with your brain and display the computer system over your vision. The computer was controlled by thinking and feeling, and the more you used it the better it got to know you. Eventually, it was like you were born with it.

The HUD, known as NetLink after the company that introduced it, allowed any number of computer functions to be completed as quickly as you could think it. Checking email, getting directions, and even paying for things was completely seamless. When you got to the counter to complete your purchase, the register you were at would show up as an icon in your HUD, allowing you to select it and transfer money from your connected accounts. Inputting an address showed a faint blue line in your vision that you could follow within inches. Basically, handheld phones were unnecessary.

Tori got into her car and linked with the onboard computer. When it recognized her ID, it started up and displayed '_Where would you like to go?_' on her netlink. She found the nearest grocery store in her contacts and selected it, and with a destination locked in the car began its journey, completely autonomously.

Most people used commutes to sleep a little more on their way to work or go through their messages. Car interiors were designed much differently than they had been at inception, allowing for much more room and luxury. Seats spun 360 degrees and higher-end cars had screens built in. Party types had tables built for bottle service. The cars were still manually drivable, but it was so rare that most people didn't even know how.

Ten minutes or so into the trip, the car sounded an audible 'Redirecting' before crossing three lanes of traffic to get to the nearest exit. Tori sat up straighter and looked around her, suddenly alert to something gone wrong. An auto's computer would always display alternate routes in your netlink before changing direction, allowing the owner to choose a route if their original one was unavailable. The only time it didn't was in an accident-avoidance situation. She didn't see anything around her that indicated an accident and the car was still moving, but as the car took the exit-two too early-she noticed that every other car around her was doing the same thing.

While Tori wasn't the best hacker, she was pretty good, so she brought up a couple of tools to scan the area for anything that seemed out of the ordinary. Her antivirus status log said that everything was in order, but a deeper look with WireWarden showed that all traffic in the immediate area was being routed through a single tower. The only legal reason for that would be the other towers going offline due to power outages or hardware failure. The only _other_ reason would be so someone could filter the traffic and find specific types of requests, either to alter or deny. Was someone actually doing that now? And if so, what did they want?

As the car slowed to a stop at the first intersection, some of the others that had exited with her started sprouting off in other directions. Tori kept scanning, sorting through the GPS routes the cars around her were on to see if she could find something out of place. Before she could start tracing the routes a message icon popped up in her netlink, but instead of waiting for her to read it on her own it force-opened and showed the message in all caps: GET OUT OF THE CAR.

She hadn't seen anything obviously wrong around her until she noticed that both of the stop lights were red. Not one to ignore shadowy messages of danger, Tori got out of the car and jogged to the sidewalk, wondering what kind of software glitch would cause that. As soon as she cleared the curb, the light on her side turned green. Disregarding the light, an armored truck with the NetLink logo attempted to go through the intersection, but didn't quite make it across. A semi came up from behind Tori, swerved in-between her car and the one next to her, and pushed past them to t-bone the truck, pinning it between itself and a bus stop.

The impact created a deafening blast of sound, forcing Tori to plug her ears. Tires squealed and sparks flew as the big rig pushed the armored truck into the parallel parking lane on the street adjacent to the one she was standing on. She looked into the street and saw that her car was totaled, the roof caved right into the driver's seat. The car next to hers, luckily not as damaged, turned onto the next street and parked. No one else moved.

The idea that she could have been killed hit her like the semi she had just watched. Panicked feelings built up and washed over her, causing the vital signs in her netlink to glow a faint red. Her eyes darted from one side of the road to the other, scanning the area for everything she could think of. Checking vital signs of the other drivers, testing for a gas leak from the wreck, and still scoping traffic in WireWarden to see if she could catch another glimpse of the hacker. The smell of burnt rubber was an affront to her senses, and the lit sign for a coffee shop a few doors down was a welcomed distraction to get her off the street.

Before she could clear the intersection, she noticed a small figure dressed in a black and red body suit emerge from the back of the armored truck. She zoomed in through her netlink and tried to see the person's face, but they were gone as soon as soon as they came, moving impossibly fast through the night with a bag slung over their shoulder. A couple of the rerouted drivers on the unaffected side opened their doors and stood up, looking around sheepishly from behind their car doors. Her netlink had identified the accident and popped up a notification asking her if she'd like to contact the police, but she cleared it; someone else had probably already done so.

The police would show up eventually, with _eventually_ being the keyword. Even in her neighborhood where the crime rates were relatively controlled, the police were so busy with worse-off neighborhoods that resources were stretched thin and not every call was answered. This, though, should get someone's attention. She thought fleetingly about the car in front of hers and how the driver was still in it when the semi barreled through. The idea left a sinking feeling in her chest and she couldn't bring herself to go look.

Not five minutes after entering the café another message icon popped up in her netlink, but this time it waited to be read. Tori ordered a gingerbread latte and took a table in the front corner of the shop that faced the road. She sipped the warm liquid, thankful for something to help wash away the feeling taking over her body, and opened the message.

**Glad to see you got out. The person in front of you wasn't as lucky, I don't think.**

Tori felt the warmth of the latte instantly turn to ice in her veins. Someone was hacking the grid, and that person was contacting her directly.

**Who is this?**

**I noticed you fingering around before the accident. Assuming your ID is real, your name is Tori? You might be able to help me out.**

**What could you possibly want from me?**

**Maybe nothing, maybe not. Keep your eyes open.**

When she finished reading the message, Tori tried to archive it to examine more closely later, but the message deleted itself.

Not only was she down a car and miles away from where she intended to be, she was being cyberstalked by a hacker that had just caused an accident. Outside, onlookers started gathering around the two trucks, looking for victims that might be hurt. Or worse, dead. To her surprise, an LAPD cruiser showed up with its lights on, pulling up next to the armored truck in such a way to block it off from the people still gathering to watch. Another look reminded her that the armored truck was from NetLink, and the response time made sense.

Tori pulled up her contacts list again and found Beck, then clicked the phone icon to start a voice call with him.

"Tori?" asked Beck, sounding surprised at the call.

"I almost just died." Tori heard rustling sounds, and the faint background hum of being on speakerphone was cut short.

"What happened?" asked Beck, concern clear in his tone.

"I was on my way to the grocery store until my car rerouted, and then there was an accident."

"Are you okay? Do you need me to come get you?"

Tori tried to answer but couldn't, her mind racing through too many things to form a cohesive thought. She watched the policeman guide people back from the accident, his hands up in a pushing motion. The driver of the NetLink truck got out of the vehicle and stood next to it, lighting a cigarette. When she was about to answer Beck's question, another message popped up. She opened it hungrily, hoping it was the hacker, wanting to know more about what was going on.

**Q2/45.2a:14. Tomorrow, nine PM.**

"Hello?"

"Sorry," said Tori, almost shouting it as she came out of the trance-like state she had been in while trying to absorb everything. "Yeah, I'll send you coordinates. Thanks"

"I'll be there as soon as I can."


	2. I'm Curious About You

More police had arrived at the scene of the accident. She watched as the guard from the NetLink truck talked to two of the officers. He made gestures with his arms, showing how the accident happened. One of the officers was writing things down on a notepad, something most people seldom did; physical files were a lot harder to hack.

An ambulance and a fire truck pulled up to the wreckage within a few minutes of each other and started sorting out the situation. They grabbed tools to pry the front car open and retrieve the body of the driver. There wasn't much car left, and the thought of what that scene looked like made Tori's stomach turn. She tried to ignore the flashing lights.

To curb her anxiety during the wait, Tori decided to review the video log to try and get a better glimpse at the thief. Netlinks had enough onboard storage to keep up to thirty minutes of video. Anything you saw through your eyes was automatically recorded, unless you specifically changed your settings stop it. As the storage filled up, the oldest minutes were deleted to make room for new ones. You also had the ability to save the recordings to another location, so long as you had decent servers and the storage for it.

Tori accessed the video section of her log and started the playback. To her confusion, the entire accident was missing from her recent recordings. Playback started as the officers talked to the armored truck driver, but as she scrolled through, the video jumped from the post-accident scene to her getting in the car to leave. She searched around in the root of the log to see if there had been any unauthorized access to her netlink that she had missed, but there was nothing. Beck rolled up in another autocar similar to the one she had, and she made her way over to him in a frightened daze.

"Tori?" Beck had rolled the window down so she could see his face.

"Hey, thanks for coming." She walked over and got into the passenger seat. "My car…"

"What happened over there?" Beck asked, turning sideways in his seat to look at her.

"There was an accident. But it was more than that. I was on my way to the store and all of a sudden my car rerouted, but so did all of the cars around me."

"That's unusual, but not unheard of. How did the accident happen?"

Tori kept her eyes on the scene across the street. "We all took the same exit. When we came to the light, it changed, and the semi behind us kept going through the intersection."

Beck traced her line of sight and watched himself. The NetLink guard finished closing his truck up and lit a cigarette, and by the way he moved they could tell he was talking to someone through his netlink. The officer that had been taking notes was now helping to direct traffic around the tow truck. Other officers that had arrived while Tori was waiting for Beck were interviewing people involved in the accident, taking their information and verbal statements.

Tori realized that since her car was over there, they would be looking for her. It was registered in her name and tied to her netlink. Since she had left the scene of the accident, would they find her suspicious? Would she get in trouble for leaving her car unattended? There were a lot of questions on the legal side, but just as many coming from other directions, mainly the unknown hacker that had caused the whole thing. Was it them she had seen, flashing so quickly behind the armored truck? If so, how could someone move that fast? What were they after?

"I have to go over there," Tori finally said, feeling nervousness coursing through her. "My car is still there and I'm going to have to talk to someone."

"I can come with you, or wait for you. Whatever you need."

"Keep it parked here, I'll be back in a few." She thought of the corrupted video in her feed. "Take this and check it out while I'm gone." After attaching the video to a message, she sent it to Beck's ID and got out of the car.

The last time a big hack made the news, a small group of high school kids had managed to reroute funds from a local bank into an anonymous crypto wallet, then used those funds to buy a slew of coin. They covered their tracks perfectly and were well on their way to getting off scot-free, but one of the younger kids in the group got caught bragging and was turned in. When presented with the deal for a lesser sentence in exchange for information, he turned into a fourteen-year-old songbird.

One of the most profitable industries was cybersecurity, and that profit margin rose every day. Billions of people the world over needed ironclad security for their netlinks, and most were willing to pay whatever they needed to. With their entire lives being conducted through a single piece of technology, no amount of security was too much. When all it took was the squint of an eye to snap a photo, send a message, or make a payment, someone else could take everything from you in the same moment. Fearmongering was an excellent source of income.

Tori made her way back to her now-totaled car, careful to keep an eye out for anything else that could potentially go wrong. She pinpointed security and traffic cameras, wondering if the person who had sent her the message was watching through them. The others who were involved in the accident were still in their cars, either talking to loved ones or waiting patiently for the police to get to them. Two officers stood outside of the car in front of Tori's, so she settled in next to hers to wait her turn.

In the moment, Tori was afraid. She knew that what she had seen was real, but she had no proof. Was it possible that the person who contacted her had also hacked into her logs? She had long thought it near impossible to breach her security, but apparently the time had come. Regular off-the-shelf security was pretty easy to bypass, but she had customized hers herself. A combination of learning surface-level techniques and getting tips from people on the darknet. The problem with taking tips from the darknet was that a lot of people that presented solutions to problems already had ways to circumvent those solutions.

She heard the quiet chime of someone accessing her ID.

"Good evening, Miss Vega." The officer who had been writing in his notepad had approached her car while she was digging into her logs.

"Oh, hey there. Any idea what's going on with all of this mess?"

"Not really sure yet. A few people are shaken up, and I can see you're to be included in the insurance report for automobile damage."

Tori glanced over her shoulder at the mangled car. "Yeah, that would be helpful. There are a lot of autocab companies out there, but nothing beats having your own car that you can just cruise in and listen to music, without having to pay per mile."

"I hear that," the officer breathed with a laugh. He wrote down her license plate number and flipped some pages back and forth. "What were you up to tonight before this happened?"

"I was just on my way to the grocery store for the weekly restocking. Again, I could have it delivered, but sometimes night excursions can be relaxing. Not counting this one, of course."

"Right you are." Tori heard the familiar ping which meant he was accessing her ID again, and an alert showed up in red telling her the officer had tried to access her log without a warrant, which was illegal. "I'm getting your identification information recorded along with the current status of your vehicle. Did you manage to upload a clean copy of the accident to another server?"

Tori felt sweat drip down her spine. "No, should I have?"

"It's a good practice to quickly save something like that offsite just in case, but it isn't mandatory by any means."

"I tried to check the video log after it happened and it seems like its corrupted somehow. I think maybe the glitches caused interference or something?" Tori tried her best to feign ignorance and hoped it was working.

"We've been hearing the same from the others, so it's not just you. Anyway, images will be sent to the insurance company for further review of the situation. When they come up with a verdict, they will be in touch with you." He looked around at the cameras Tori had previously marked and then back down at his notepad. "Did you happen to see anything out of the ordinary prior to the collision, or shortly after?"

"Nothing that I can think of. I know cars get rerouted like that sometimes when there are outages so I wasn't too thrown off." Tori could feel the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. Between the attempted illegal search and obvious lack of any video evidence elsewhere, the cops were probing everyone to see if they could be tied to the situation in any way.

"The NetLink service was down for approximately ten minutes, taking out the camera feeds in the area and causing issues with the traffic lights. Without any video it's hard to really determine what exactly happened. Nothing to be worried about, though, technicians will be on scene in a few minutes to get everything working tip-top again."

"That's a relief," said Tori, snapping a picture of the officer's face and badge to store away for later. "Is there anything else you need from me?"

"That should be everything," said the officer, flipping his notepad shut and shoving it in his shirt pocket. "The tow truck driver has been instructed to move all affected vehicles to the police impound lot, and once insurance comes through you can correspond with them on what to do with it. If we need something from you we'll be in touch. Otherwise, wait to hear back from the insurance company. Do you need assistance getting home?"

"No, I actually have a friend waiting for me over by the coffee shop up the road. I called him when this first happened."

"Alright then, miss. Have yourself a good night."

"You too."

He snapped a two-fingered wave and walked back toward the collision point where the other officer was speaking with the armored truck driver and a new arrival, one of the technicians from NetLink. His work van was parked on the side of the road, surrounded by wifi traffic beacons. Tori took another couple snapshots of them all standing together as she turned back toward Beck's car.

Her mind raced a mile a minute. She was certain of a few things. One, the hacker had disabled all video feeds in the area before the collision, most likely so they, or someone they were working with, could complete their heist without being recorded. Two, the cops were secretly trying to take any footage they could from those involved in the situation, even without a warrant. Lastly, Tori had been hacked. She felt it safe to assume that since she had been hacked, even with her impressive security, that everyone else had been as well, leaving no trace of the accident behind.

The hacker managed a rather significant feat in a very short amount of time. Not only had Netlink's security for the grid been compromised, but all other cameras in the video as well, even those belonging to private businesses. The person, if she was sure that was what it was, that had stolen from the truck was working with a hacker, what could they have stolen to need that kind of expertise?

Tori hurried back to Beck's car and slipped into the passenger's seat. "I need to go to quadrant 2."

"What for?" asked Beck. "And what was up with the video you sent me?"

"I know it's going to sound crazy, but I saw something after the accident. It happened really fast, but I swear I saw something. Someone. They were small and slender, so I think it might have been a woman. She come out of nowhere, ripped the back doors of the truck open, then disappeared with a small black bag." Tori rolled her window down to let cooler air into the car. "Maybe three seconds worth of time for all of it."

"Is that why this video is altered?"

"Yes."

"I'm guessing it wasn't you that did the editing either, right?"

"It was not."

Beck huffed out a breath. "What part of 2?"

"Section 45."

Tori didn't look at Beck as she said it. Section 45 was one of the worst parts of the quadrant, bordering the blockade. Past that lived the religious sects. Groups of people that didn't believe in human augmentation. Abominations, they called them. Not even just the people that got luxury augments. Medical patients with advanced prosthetics and artificial organs were also deemed undesirable. Cheaper, classic options still existed, but no one went for them with the promise of a fully functioning limb dangling in front of them. Old prosthetics had limited use but were mostly just for show, whereas Netlink's augmentations department, Meridian Labs, had neural-linked limbs that functioned like your own biological ones, and looked just as real to boot.

When human augmentations started to leave the hospital and pop up in black market clinics, a lot of people took notice, and most of it wasn't for good. Questions of capability, sterility, and ethics started swirling around. Who were the people doing these procedures? Were they licensed? Where was the technology coming from? If those questions weren't easy to answer, more than likely the feds would come knocking sooner or later. Eventually, for that reason, the shops, known as _bazaars_, went underground.

They weren't hard to find if you were really looking for them. There's always some guy that knows a guy that can give you an address. That said, getting through the door was not as easy. Bazaar security was some of the best in the world, and if you weren't supposed to be there, or couldn't at least smooth talk your way through a good excuse, there was no way you were getting in. 2 was a good place to find a bazaar, and Tori wondered if that's where they were headed.

Beck signaled a billboard ahead of them. "We're getting closer." Half of it had Jesus on the cross, and the other half had a _Molly_ with its augments being torn off. People called heavily-augmented humans _Mollys _in homage of Molly Millions, a fictional character that helped lay the groundwork for the reality they were living. "Do you have all of your security updated?"

Tori smirked without opening her eyes.

"Right, look who I'm asking. Anyway, what should we be expecting here?"

"I'm really not sure," said Tori, sitting up herself in order to get her head in the game. "All I got was a quick message: **Q2/45.2a:14. Tomorrow, nine PM.**

"Well it's definitely not tomorrow."

"I know. But I want to go get a feel for the area. Look around a bit and see if there's anything I can pick up on."

The two were quiet for the remainder of the ride. Tori shut off the car's GPS and canceled the route when they got near the neighborhood, in case someone was sniffing traffic in the area, which was usually always the case. The car pulled into a gas station around the corner from the building their target location was in. Quadrant 2, section 45, building 2. A for ground level, 14 for the apartment number. Tori brought up WireWarden to get the lay of the land, and most of the traffic looked normal. She activated a few of her advanced filters to see past ISP blocks and regular netlink security, and things got interesting.

A lot of data was coming in and out from a particular IP address, but when Tori tried to zero in and get more information, a simple WHOIS command gave her back her own information, which meant whoever was moving data didn't want anyone to know who they were or what they had.

"I'm gonna go inside and get something to drink," said Beck, "want anything?"

"Yeah I'll take a water, thank you."

Beck got out and Tori shifted in her seat. She looked out the passenger side window, scanning the windows of the buildings on the block, wondering why the hacker brought her out here. Most of the buildings looked normal. Crumbling in poverty and crawling with scary gang-types and dangerous shut-ins that could chop you up and sell your augments _and _drain your bank account at the same time, but normal. The idea of ending up on a slab sometimes kept Tori up at night. She had a powerful netlink with custom security, not to mention accidentally-augmented hearing. She had worked hard to afford what she had, but that wouldn't stop someone else from taking it from her.

With everything going on, Tori decided to check her financial status. Her netlink had been compromised, so there was a possibility her warm wallet could have been compromised as well. She pinged her bank accounts and read back balances, and everything seemed fine. Contract statuses for her house and car seemed fine as well, though the car situation would have to be fixed soon.

"The message specifically said nine o'clock _tomorrow_ night."

Tori's head snapped to the left to see a strange woman sitting in Beck's seat. She immediately reached for the door handle but the woman grabbed her arm and pulled toward herself. "Who are you? What do you want from me?" She could see the back of Beck's head at the cash register, but she couldn't move under the woman's strong grip.

"I'm just curious about you, that's all. Let's go for a ride."


	3. readthistxt

A shorter, slim woman put the car in drive manually and pulled the car out of the gas station parking lot. Tori watched her work the clutch like a professional, her hands and feet in perfect rhythm. The smoothness of it all was mesmerizing, but the unfamiliarity of the stranger next to her snapped her out of the moment.

"Are you the hacker?"

"Please, don't say it like that."

"Like what?"

The woman turned away from the building the next day's meeting was to be at, and Tori's chest started welling with fear. She was getting further from Beck and had no idea where they were going. She tried reaching for the handle again and the woman re-engaged the electronic locks, just so the noise would remind her that she was trapped.

"I don't know. The way you said it made it seem so…juvenile. Like a video game character or something."

"So this isn't a game?" asked Tori, trying to find a way in to ask the questions she desperately needed answers to. "The redirect? The accident?"

"How much do you know?"

"I don't know anything and it's kind of scaring me and driving me insane at the same time."

The car pulled into a different building, one that looked a bit nicer than the meeting place. "My name is Katherine. So now you know at least one thing."

"Okay Katherine," said Tori, "how did you know where to find me? Why are you tracking me? _How_ are you tracking me? Did you erase-"

"Look at me." She waited until Tori's whiskey-brown eyes met hers. "Patience, my dear." Katherine's voice sounded like butter. She put the car in park but kept it running so the locks stayed engaged. "What did you see at the scene of the accident?"

Tori replayed the scene in her head for the hundredth time. "Semi. Armored truck. Someone-you-told me to get out. The crash. You whipped in and out of the back of the armored truck and took off. Impossibly fast, too. How-"

"You were packet sniffing at the intersection, looking for something out of place." Katherine had a way of interrupting before Tori got too hysterical, and her tone had turned harsh. "I cover my tracks well, so I'm confident you didn't find anything useful. But you did happen to see me and my little package."

The car was eerily silent after that. Tori had been trying to ping Beck through her netlink, but her connection wasn't working. It wasn't possible to completely shut someone out from just a single hardware netlink itself, but Tori assumed that Katherine had taken over the servers in the area and could block user connections that way. She was probably jamming Tori's signal so she couldn't call for help. But that couldn't stop her from recording. Could it? She started an audio recording in the background and let it roll.

A couple guys walked out of the building and got into a pickup parked across from them. Tori was pretending to watch them while she was actually checking her file system. Everything seemed to be okay-there were no alerts or red flags-but she could tell that she was being manipulated. If she had learned one thing from her father, it was that she had a terrible poker face.

Katherine gingerly graced Tori's chin with a finger, turning her head to face her so she could look into her eyes. "I'm not the boogeyman. I'm just trying to protect myself."

The words were silky and warm. "Well you could have easily done that without me here. You've been controlling this situation from the beginning. Why meet me in person if you want to stay anonymous?"

For the first time, Katherine didn't answer back with confidence. She sat back up in the driver's seat and pulled out of the parking lot, heading back in the direction of where they had left Beck. Tori was dying to know the answer, but she was afraid that pressing the issue might upset her. After a few minutes the gas station moved back into view, and Tori felt hungrily for the door handle once more.

Beck was pacing in the parking lot, and when he heard the car pull up, he ran to the driver's side door, only to back up slowly when he noticed Katherine sitting in the seat. Tori heard the locks disengage as soon as the car was put in park, and the noise made both of them flinch, and in the moment, she watched Katherine quickly retract her hand from near Tori's side. Tori jumped out, running over to Beck and the safety of another person. Katherine got out and left the driver's side door open, sweeping around the back end to face the others.

"Well, I guess we don't need that meeting tomorrow anymore," said Katherine. "I basically just wanted to chat for a minute, and we did that."

"Yeah, and you rooted through my head the whole time," Tori stated matter-of-factly, feeling a little more confident since she was no longer alone.

"I hope you'll forgive me. Nice to meet you, Tori. Take care." Katherine turned on her heels and started walking in the direction they had just come from. "Bye Beck, nice Gen3's" she called out over her shoulder.

"That's it?" Tori asked, but Katherine didn't stop or answer.

A slurry of emotion ran through Tori, so much that she couldn't hope to sort them out individually, at least not in the next ten years. She looked at Beck who stood next to her, mouth agape, completely dumbfounded at the interaction he had just witnessed. He probably felt the same way she did without even knowing it. He probably assumed Katherine was someone Tori knew based on the fact that she used their names, and because of her calm and confident demeanor. That maybe the whole incident was a coincidence. He also probably had no idea how much danger Tori was just in.

Without saying anything else, Tori got in the car and shut the door, and Beck followed suit. He kept looking at her out of the corner of his eye, wanting to ask questions, but was waiting for a cue from her to do so. She tilted her head toward the window and started digging into her file system, looking for any kind of back door or message that Katherine might have left. She knew the normal spots to look in for most rootkits and web-based malware, so she started tearing through them, folder by folder, even though part of her knew that Katherine wouldn't be so _discount_.

"Friend of yours?" Beck finally asked, programming his address into the GPS.

"Not exactly," said Tori.

"I think we'll just head to my house and you can crash in the spare room. It's been a weird night."

Tori managed a mumbled "OK" and kept working.

Tori woke up early, an hour or two before the sun would rise. She hadn't slept very well, images of Katherine and the accident and filetrees flashing through her mind's eye. She didn't find anything in her netlink that she could tie back to Katherine, but she knew something had to be there. It was more than a simple wipe job. Katherine was more than likely capable of things Tori couldn't do with two people's help, so taking the unnecessary risk of meeting her in person didn't make sense. Unless she wanted her dead, but if that was the case, she could have done it when they left Beck at the gas station. Whatever it was, Tori needed to find out.

As soon as she slipped out of bed she stumbled forward a little, catching herself on the computer desk next to the door. _Great_, she thought, _an off-day_. When Tori had gone in for the netlink surgery shortly after her twenty-second birthday, she was one of a small subset of people that had complications with the procedure. There were of course those that had some adverse effects, but they normally went away after a week or two of healing. In Tori's case, some had more serious neural complications, and hers were realized in the form of bouts of vertigo. A couple years of dealing with it made it pretty mild. What she didn't expect was to come out of it with what her friends called _superhuman_ hearing.

Around age twenty-five, Tori suddenly noticed that her hearing had gotten sharper. A _lot_ sharper. She could hear people whispering from across the room. She could separate a throat-clearing at an orchestra from one of the top boxes. The world always kept a balance, of course, and her hearing came at the cost of vertigo spells that would sometimes land her on the ground in front of strangers. Still, she believed that the ability, an as-of-yet not understood anomaly, was worth the trade-off. Beck had a form of degenerative disk disease that was making it so he couldn't walk, but his Meridian augments, state of the art leg prosthetics made of a super lightweight Kevlar, made it so he could kick down a metal door with negligent force.

She steadied herself on the door frame and made her way slowly downstairs, hoping to find something good to eat in Beck's kitchen. She never made it to the store and hadn't eaten anything for dinner the night before, so she was feeling ravenous. Beck was asleep on the couch, having not made it up to his room. That was typical of him. The TV showed news and hummed along at a low volume. The tail end of a story on the accident was showing. The footage showed the damaged vehicles, including hers, which reminded her she needed to contact the police impound. "A thirty-six year old local man was killed," the reporter added.

Tori sat at the kitchen island with a bowl of Rice Krispies and decided to buckle down again and search for Katherine's fingerprint. She tried to think of obscure or hard to reach places, areas of the filesystem that were locked down and not easily accessible. System error logs didn't show anything. The operating system files, after a thorough scan, were determined to be untouched. With a little more poking around, Tori used a command line approach to access the recovery partition of the built-in memory in her netlink. At first glance everything looked the same, but her custom scripts notified her in red that the checksum of the recovery data image had changed since last scan.

Her heart beat a little bit faster. She squinted and blinked around, accessing different programs to unpack the recovery image and see what was different. A newly created file was sitting in the main directory, just waiting to be opened like a present on Christmas. With only the smallest hint of hesitation, Tori opened the file.

**Sorry to leave a message like this. Police are watching. The officer with the clipboard was scrubbing video to erase any evidence of my theft. When he couldn't access your file system, he notified further up the chain and they're working on something. Spoof your ID until you get home. When they show up, tell them you're one of the paranoid types and you don't like having security holes, then show them the edited video. They'll figure out that I had already gotten to you like the rest of them and they'll leave you alone. This is important, Tori. Don't ask too many questions and act the right amount of nervous. If they sense something is off it could be bad for both of us.**

She read the message over and over. _They're working on something._ If they wanted her, why hadn't they shown up yet? And it hit her: Katherine had been working her magic all night, and one of the most obvious things she had done had gone unnoticed as Tori was digging deeper: she disabled Tori's GPS tracker.

"Beck," Tori called out, an attempt to rouse him from sleep. "Wake up, look at this."

She flung the screen she saw in her netlink to the TV, making it so Beck could read the message that Katherine left for her. Beck blinked slowly and rubbed his eyes, not making much of a move until Tori walked over and sat on his legs.

"What am I looking at?" asked Beck.

"I found it. I found the message Katherine left for me."

"Who is Katherine?"

Tori sighed audibly. "The hacker, the woman from last night."

Beck jerked upright and instantly seemed more alert. He read the message on the screen and laid back in his original position, clearly doing something on his netlink. "She's got you involved with the police? Tori…"

"I don't like it either, but there's something bigger going on here. She could have hurt me, but she didn't. She actually saved me by telling me to get out of the car before the semi came through. She's had several chances to physically harm me, frame me, or whatever else, and she hasn't."

"But how do you know there's something deeper? Maybe it just took her a little more time because of your custom security."

"I don't think it was that." Tori got up and walked over to the kitchen. "There was something in the way she spoke. I can't exactly put my finger on it." She disposed of the now soggy cereal she was too worked up to eat, leaving the bowl in the sink for later. "There was a way she kept trying to initiate eye contact. Her voice was very sturdy and certain, but at the same time it made me picture melted caramel."

Beck's eyebrows rose to meet his hairline and Tori immediately blushed scarlet. "What about your time in the car last night? Did you record anything?"

Tori almost tripped over a bar stool in her hurry back to the couch. She navigated to her temporary folder and did a quick wildcard search with the mp3 extension, but only found a single 1kb file. When she tried to play it her log displayed an error, _malformed file: not accessible_, so she decided to act on a hunch. She changed the file extension to .txt and opened it to find a large ASCII-art smiley face, one she couldn't help but mimic on her own.

"We're going to Krebstar tonight."

A couple of hours past dusk, Tori and Beck climbed back into Beck's car and set the same course they had the previous night. It was a Wednesday, so there wasn't much traffic, but Quadrant 2 was far enough away that they had time to relax on the highway. Tori connected to her server at home through her netlink and brought up some old photos. Sometimes she missed her friends, and seeing their smiles and remembering their laughs helped her get through the rough patches.

Beck and Cat were the only people that were left of the original group, and Cat had moved to the other side of town by the filming lots. They still talked occasionally, but it wasn't like high school. Sitting around at the Karaoke-doke and singing just for the fun of it. Jade's constant jabs at her for no reason other than she was breathing too loud or existing in the same room as her. Their teenage problems were nothing, and it took losing a lot for them to realize it.

The NetLink Corporation first opened in the late 2020's, and the unveiling of their life-changing product in the early 2030's was the beginning of catastrophic changes. Society had been rivaling with income inequality and resource scarcity for many years, but the introduction of neural augmentation skyrocketed the super-rich into the future, while it took several years for even white-collar workers to get their hands on it. In the same way that the richer you are the richer you get, those who first had access to the technology had the unfair advantage of not only perfecting it, but creating addons, plugins, and other accessories and services that would eventually become essential to everyday life.

When cheaper, less-powerful version started trickling down the line to the blue-collar families, unrest began spreading at an unprecedented rate. The zealots that shunned augmentation started rallying in the streets, urging people to turn to God instead of desecrating their bodies. The poorest of the poor, those that couldn't even get their hands on the cheaper tech, started to get violent. Some people preached that access to technology should be a right and not a privilege in an increasingly tech-oriented society, and when no one listened, they _made_ them listen. Resistance groups formed and routinely attacked NetLink transports like the one Tori had seen the previous night, hoping to steal technology in transit.

Most didn't get anything. Some died.

"Hey Tor, you remember when Sabourin had to postpone one of his speeches because one of his mollies couldn't stop doing the jerk-off motion and telling people to go fuck themselves?"

Tori almost snorted with laughter. "Of course, who could forget?"

"Maybe your girl put him up to it, eh?"

Beck was of course kidding, and the little elbow jab he did livened up the stale seriousness of the car, but the implications of what he said Were far-reaching enough to make Tori worry. She knew there were people out there that could do great and terrible things, but seeing them up close was another story. Stories of bank takeovers and identity thieves plagued the news and someone was always losing their life savings or a family member that couldn't afford an augmented organ. Katherine's little stunt cost someone their life. Where did it end?

As the car slowed to an exit, Tori started preparing herself for the bazaar. Krebstar was a sort-of all-in-one shop, where you could get anything from drugs and illegal code to heavy augments. The code to get in was always different but the shop never moved like some did, which made a few people skeptical of how much the government had their hand in their operations. That said, you could still get pretty much anything you needed from there, and if you practiced basic safety techniques, there was little risk of getting caught. Beck's car made a few turns and traced the same path they had previously, until they came to rest outside a factory type building about six blocks west of the proposed meeting place.

"Did you get the password?" asked Tori, straightening her shirt out of nervousness.

"Yeah, it was apparently in a file someone injected into one of NetLink's servers in Quadrant 4. Great sense of humor."

They got out of the car and headed for the building. Beck stepped in front of Tori as they reached the doorway into the building, and a scanner pinged their IDs from the stairway. Beck poked around until he found a text entry interface and plugged in the password he had gotten off the darkweb. Tori saw the small red light in the bottom corner of her vision turn green and the locks on the door disengaged, allowing Beck to open it and let them inside.


End file.
